Born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric van den Bogaerde - his father was Dutch, his mother English - Dirk Bogarde was one of Britain's greatest film stars.
He made one film in 1939 before serving in the Second World War, during which he was decorated for valour and achieved the rank of major in the Queen's Royal Regiment. He returned to acting, and was encouraged to pursue a career on the stage by Noel Coward, but his matinee-idol looks soon saw him being offered film roles and he signed a long-term contract with Rank studios.
Bogarde was a popular and successful star throughout the 1950s, staring in romantic comedies, crime thrillers and war films. As he grew older, he sought more challenging roles and he successfully matured as an actor throughought the 1960s, winning two best actor British Academy Awards for The Servant (1963) and Darling (1965).
His most significant film of the 60s and from a gay historical persepective, was Victim (1961), in which he played a married man who is blackmailed for his homosexuality. This film was brave for the time, and a brave choice for a closeted gay actor and is probably the first sympathetic gay character in British film. His courageous and moving portrayal of an 'ordinary' homosexual probably helped change public perceptions of homosexuality in the years leading up to decriminalisation.By the 1970s, Bogarde had moved to France with his manager and partner, Tony Forwood, and mostly worked in European films. His most notable appearances were in Death In Venice (1971), The Damned (1969), & The Night Porter (1974). These darker, European films allowed him to develop further as an actor, and play further gay characters, although he remained taciturn about his own private life.
In the 1980s, he returned to England with Tony Forwood, whom he cared for through a long terminal illness, and turned from acting to writing. In the 80s and 90s, he published sixteen volumes of fiction and autobiography. Knighted in 1992, he was badly affected by a stroke in 1996, and died of a heart attack in 1999.
Always very guarded in revealing his sexuality, even in his autobiography, Dirk Bogarde was widely known to be gay, and his courage in being the first actor and star to portray a positive image of a gay man in British cinema should not be underestimated.